Taxi Driver Online

The industry is drivers and the operators.

It's not necessarily about about having more work than you can cover.

It's about been compensated for your capital, risk and labour.

It's not a rip-off if the young lady entered the premises knowing what the prices were beforehand or if she was informed of the price before she was served the drink. She has chosen to transact of her own free will drunk or otherwise unless the bar specifically charges the drunk lady over and above their usual prices.

You don't seem to be making any sense.

If Uber quote a price of £60 and the customer accepts that price whether she or he is drunk or not is completely irrelevant.

They have both entered into a contract and as long as Uber complete the journey and the costumer pays the Driver in full the contract has been fulfilled by both parties.

Any judge in the relevant court would verify the contract. Does the woman not have to log-in to the app and specifically book her cab journey?

Why would you think no contract is being entered into by both parties?

It very well maybe the case that the NPHTA primarily represents the operators as I am sure that is where most of their revenue comes from.

However, the many news stories I have seen of different areas reporting shortages does seem to reflect what's generally happening at the moment.

Obviously, there will perhaps be some areas where there is perhaps too many drivers along with low demand but on average it appears to be a real struggle for many places to get drivers.

Some areas have managed to get new drivers like in Torbay where the council gave discounts on new applications which seems to have partially worked at least.

I think because demand has not got back to pre-covid levels it has yet to show the real crisis unfolding.

Yes demand might not ever get back to pre-covid levels but even if demand increases say 25% from here I don't think there are enough drivers on the whole to meet that demand.

I do agree with you that regardless of the state of the market that PR will be used to drive recruitment.

Also, I must state that in my posts I was generally referring to Private Hire and not Hackney Carriage.

I have always thought that there is an abundance of Hackney Carriage taxis around the country. Every time I go into a major town I always see way too many cabs on the rank and they seem to be there waiting a long time.

They are two different markets. I don't see the future of the Hackney Trade thriving going forward. It might do well in London and perhaps a few other major cities but that business model is almost obsolete in comparison to the technological advancement of the PH trade.

I hope I am wrong on that though especially as I am a former HC driver.

Lastly, in relation to offering hard data.

Please find below links to news stories on the topic. If you simply do a search on Google of taxi driver shortages you will find a plethora of stories relating to it. These links contain reports by Councils, company owners and drivers alike up and down the country so in no way does this show a one sided view in a specific corner of the country.

Please note in the Guardian article it states that according to The Department for Transport the decline in licensed drivers accross the country in the year upto June 2021 was 6% and the licensed vehicle decline was 16%. It's clear to me there are still many licensed drivers out there who have just left the trade with no intention of returning.

I expect those figures to be worse next year as there will be many driver licences expiring in the latter half of 2021 who will not renew and also many will have another 1 year left before expiry in 2022 depending on what year their license was issued in.

https://www.itv.com/news/westcountry/20 ... e-at-night
https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/bu ... -shortage/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... find-a-cab
https://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/news ... on-5505155
https://www.glasgowlive.co.uk/news/glas ... e-21344084
https://www.lancasterguardian.co.uk/new ... ed-3463682
https://planetradio.co.uk/rock-fm/local ... -pandemic/

Hope this helps.

You do know that it is illegal to actually serve alcohol to a person who is already drunk.

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Grandad,
To support my charity text MAYORWALK to 70085 to donate £5

If the bar staff know for certain the customer is heavily intoxicated then you would assume most would have the responsibility to not serve the customer. If some did for any price then it would be bad business practice.

However, in general I think all drinking establishments sell alcohol to drunk customers all the time.

It's just a case of how drunk each customer is and where do you draw the line. It's a subjective/grey area.

Most would be out of business if they adhered to a very strict policy of not serving alcohol to anyone they assume has had too much and therefore classified as drunk.

Interesting this, but the truth is that there is a lot of waiting around Time that taxis normally do, and taxis are not called for 24 hours a day in huge amounts, so the trade stumbles along on what they call bread-and-butter jobs regulars .
And if you rip them off overcharge them they don't come back we all know that but I'm not sure you do, every day a person is born, every day a person becomes 18, every day a person learns from their experiences, once bitten by Uber will be enough,

The funny thing that I am watching is hackneys that Sit on ranks is that they will find that certain drivers overcharge the public, and next time that person gets into a taxi again we will moan about the taxi driver before and often wait in the A queue rather than get into the taxi that had ripped them off before , The funny thing is where I am all the rip-off drivers have moved on. I will let you guess to wear LOL, PS the Rule of chaos is that it creates situations where people can profit

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Justice for the 96. It has only taken 27 years...........repeat the same lies for 27 years and the truth sounds strange to people!

I understand your thought process on this Mr. T and why you may be sceptical on the necessary changes required to bring the taxi business into the 21st century.

And I know only too well the waiting around for fares as I used to be a Hackney driver myself.

However, the fact that as you state taxis are not called upon 24 hours a day in huge amounts is just one of many reasons why the pricing structure does and needs to be changed.

Trains and airlines suffer the same fate because like taxis they are in the transportation business and demand for transportation is sporadic with peak times and off peak times. But unlike taxis they have a business model that maximises their revenue/profits. Buses are different because they are heavily subsidised. If they was private they would probably be similar to airlines and trains.

The objective is to capitalise on peak times to offset the off peak times which is what Uber does to a certain degree.

I am not saying their business model is perfect but it is more evolved than the archaic system most PH firms are using and what HC drivers are subjected to by the councils'.

And yes I understand peoples attitudes and nature all too well as I have seen first-hand more than most their lack of loyalty, fickle tendencies and lack of regard for drivers/operators who in their opinion are more expensive than everyone else and "rip-off" their customers.

It's their nature/incentive to go with the cheapest. We all do it to some degree in our day to day choices of what we decide to consume etc.

The problem is that there are too many operators underselling their services usually at the expense of the self-employed drivers due to their business models used which are usually tailored to a situation where they get the same income regardless of what the drivers earn. Their income is based on the more drivers they can attract. To do this they lower their prices to attract more customer demand hence the increase in drivers. This leads to a race to the bottom where you continue to undercut your competitors until you get into a situation we have now where drivers barely get by.

If companies adopted a business model more like Uber has with their pricing then customers would have no choice but to pay the prices offered.

Yes, some customers would use less taxis and others will stop using them altogether and find other alternatives such as the buses etc.

Eventually, an equilibrium would be met and the balance would be more healthy where drivers would be earning a wage that enables them to offer their services more safely and professionally. The fact that drivers have to work 50 hours + a week to survive shows you the market is not as it should be. That is too many hours to be driving professionally constantly under pressure.

I saw a post on here recently of a licensed driver crashing his BMW. Although that driver might just be a rogue/unprofessional driver the fact is when you are earning very little you can be pressured into driving recklessly and take more fares than you normally should otherwise. It's human nature. And it's a consequence of too low prices. I am actually amazed there are not more accidents caused by licensed drivers. It would be interesting to see and compare accidents caused by licensed drivers from country to country to see if there is a correlation between high percentage of accidents per driver and low prices on the average. I am sure there will be a definite correlation there.

Will there always be some ignorant less astute business operators that will always be cheaper than other operators and try to significantly undercut them?

Absolutely! Don't underestimate the amount of idiots out there.

But if the majority of operators adopted a more suitable pricing structure the drivers already left in the industry would do better than they would be doing.

It might be slow for a few months or so as the public got used to the change but it would balance out over a short while.

Some areas will accept the changes faster than other places.

And yes. The rule of chaos creates situations where people can profit.

But I am not talking about a monopoly or a wild west here.

Just a normal healthy business environment with free competition and no or very little regulation.

But don't get me started on the councils' and politicians.

I have picked on the operators but there is probably more damage done by the councils than by operators.

I will go on record and say that the councils have probably done more than anyone else to destroy the industry.

There are some good operators up and down the country who respect and treat their drivers well along with their customers.

But there is nowhere near enough.

Totally agree with you regarding councils and the ambition of some people inside them which affects the taxis trade.
Using trains and aeroplanes as examples not a good idea can't remember the last time I got on one.
You would be better off pointing out that Uber has had an effect on some of the larger private hire companies already, they are losing drivers to Uber and are having to rearrange the way they charge so that must be good for local drivers

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Justice for the 96. It has only taken 27 years...........repeat the same lies for 27 years and the truth sounds strange to people!

Funny that, was drafting a post on the rank last night pointing out that you'd posted several thousand words about 'taxis', but without clarifying whether you meant HC, PH or both

So thanks for the clarification (got a run to Dundee late last night, which saved my shift, but it meant I never got back to the draft...).


In some regards they're two different markets, but not in others. In London, most obviously, price competition from Uber has been a bone of contention from the London HC trade for years, and has obviously lost them work. Of course, nothing new about competition from the minicab trade in the capital, but this has been accelerated by Uber's marketing and the convenience of app booking etc. No need to go into the details of the latter, obviously, but suffice to say that the HC and PH markets are in competition for the same market, so there's not really a strict dichotomy between the two.

Of course, the HC/PH divide is probably more distinct in London than in the rest of the UK, where there's often little distinction between the two, and they merge into a sort of hybrid trade, particularly in smaller towns. For example, we've got 100+ HCs in East Fife, with no real PH sector, except for those attached to predominantly HD despatch offices, or those offering more specialist services such as golf tours and airport transfers.

And there are mixed HC/PH fleets in some cities as well, like Dundee and Aberdeen, where PHVs use taximeters and charge the council HC tariff. Ditto the likes of Brighton, as far as I know.

So London is perhaps one extreme, and locations at the other extreme are HC dominated (or in more rural locations, perhaps PH-only). But to say HC and PH are two different markets is surely an oversimplification.


Well indeed, the 6% reduction in drivers seems to be about as hard as the data gets, and is totally inconsistent with the nonsense spouted by the LPHCA and others. And 6% doesn't seem a particularly significant number, especially in view of the uncharted territory of the post-pandemic market. In one year the number of HCs in my gaff once increased 50%

And, for example, the operator in Newcastle who recently said he had 500 drivers left after lockdown, so needed another 500. He managed to recruit 120 (as I recall it), but then was back with more recruitment advertorial in the press saying he still needed 500

Yes, I need to win £10million on the Euromillions

And thanks for the links, but pretty sure all those articles have been posted on here and dissected, which is why many of us take the stats which a huge pinch of salt

Ah, so because they all do it that makes it ok then in your eyes. It is still illegal.

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Grandad,
To support my charity text MAYORWALK to 70085 to donate £5

I think it would be chaos for those of us wishing to earn a good living.

If I was to guess I would say the best paid cab drivers in the UK work in London. It's not pure coincidence that they have the hardest entry criteria.

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IDFIMH

So you are saying a contract entered into when one side is pi**ed, will stand up to legal scrutiny?

Another view I don't share with you.

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IDFIMH

By operators, not drivers.

There are some very good operators out there, a few on here, but for most of them I wouldn't trust a single word of what they say.

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IDFIMH

I think both sides of the trade have a great future ahead, as long as they adapt to the needs of customers in 2022 rather than the needs in 1847 and 1976.

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IDFIMH

Drafted half this last night, and have kind of lost the thread a bit, and can't really recall all the stuff I intended posting. And can't be bothered going back over RTD's voluminous posts to cover everything, but this is just a few thoughts about surge-pricing and its applicability to the trade etc.



Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's what they call neoclassical economics?

But the other side of the market clearing/equilibrium model is that customers are paying significantly higher, and at times huge multiples would be required to balance supply and demand.

Which is why I think your preferred model simply isn't going to happen anytime soon - the chances of regulators deregulating hackney carriage fares in the near future are less than zero, in my opinion, because early hours undersupply is going to get worse in the short- to medium-term, I suspect, which is when the women's safety stuff and suchlike comes into play, so policy makers simply aren't going to let it rip anytime in the near future.

Ditto regulation more generally, and although I think some of the ULEZ and CAZ stuff is well over the top, and obviously happening at the worst possible time, the chance of any major reversal in that regards seems limited (although I suspect there will be a stay of execution for many until the wreckage of the pandemic becomes a bit clearer).

Which in turn raises another big question in relation to your several thousand words about the 'taxi' industry. Do you mean hackney carriages, private hire, or both?

But as regards your promotion of a surge-pricing model, it's perhaps worth pointing out that (I think) all 350+ UK councils have different HC tariffs for unsocial hours, and some have them for weekends and 'party' tariffs applying after midnight (say), and on public holidays. And all have them over the festive period, as far as I know.

So that's a form of surge-pricing, although very crude, obviously, and certainly not dynamic in the sense of Uber's.

But there is an element of dynamism in even HC fare-setting in that discounting is commonplace in some areas. Which of course is the opposite of the dynamic, market-clearing surge-pricing approach you're advocating, but to a degree it's just the market introducing a bit of price-flexibility where council-regulated HC tariffs are set above what might be called the market equilibrium rate.

But in turn that maybe points towards the competitive nature of the market, at least in some areas, but which perhaps indicates the limited applicability of surge-pricing, and why other firms haven't adopted it, at least to the extent that Uber has (of course, historically the technology simply hasn't been available to support a fully dymanic Uber-style pricing model). And, of course, a crude surge-price model in the form of unsocial hours premiums etc has effectively been the norm for years, as mentioned above.

But at least one major provincial operator recently trialled surge-pricing, but gave up fairly quickly because of customer complaints. But didn't Boro Cars introduce a fixed surcharge at busy times which customers could use to effectively jump the queue and get priorty service? Again, that's not surge-pricing, but is a further refinement on the unsocial hours premiums.

But to be honest I find it difficult to get my head round Uber's surge-pricing model and how that works in terms of customer loyalty etc. But I suppose a small proportion of customers are largely price-insensitive, and will pay the price simply to secure a care immediately when they can't get one elsewhere. And while Uber may take a hit in that regard as regards customer loyalty, maybe they just think that's a price worth paying (pardon pun), while on the other hand, as a major brand they know that they can at times charge a premium price and get away with it.

But maybe the surge-price model not so easy for the more traditional providers, even assuming they have the software in place to handle dynamic pricing. Another constraint may be that traditional PH providers are competing with HCs, which obviously can't surge-price beyond the regulated tariff, whether on the ranks, or on circuits.

Moreso when PH and HCs are working on the same circuit - they can't have PH surge-pricing while HCs doing the same pre-booked work are constrained by the council-regulated tariffs.

As for airlines and the like, it's of course worth pointing out the existence of the Ryanairs and EasyJets of this world, which while are no doubt good models in terms of dynamic pricing, aren't really compatible with premium pricing per se.

And, of course, the history of the airline industry hardly demonstrates an object lesson in stability and consistency, so there's maybe a lesson of sorts there.

But, who knows, there may be a place for more dynamic pricing in the future trades, with Uber blazing the trail, and helped along by the adoption of the relevant technology.

But in the meantime I tend to think of pricing in the trades more in terms of something like restaurants, which may charge more at Christmas time, say, but their pricing isn't really dynamic in the Uber sense.